Repeater Ownership

Does GOTAhams own a repeater?

The WG6OTA 449.160 Sunset Ridge repeater carries the GOTAhams Call sign but is not owned, operated, managed, maintained or fully funded by this club. The 449.160 repeater is privately held and managed, maintained, funded by a private group, this group are all Members of the GOTAhams but treat the “Sunset Goats” repeater system as a separate entity. There are many challenges logistically, financially, technically in operating a repeater, we do not need these issues entangled with club business and distracting GOTAhams from its fundamental mission.

Purchasing, repairing, upgrading, and creating a redundant system have been in the works for over a year. We are fortunate that the last owner Hans Ehlert AE6TV has been extremely generous allowing GOTAhams to hold a nightly “Net” on this system for so long while having a exclusive offer for us to purchase this fully functioning/coordinated system. After the purchase we needed to repair the system during site accessibility problems. Hans has been Supportive, Helpful and very generous, when we realized that the RLC4 controller had failed Hans ordered and paid for the replacement to get this system back on the air!

We have had many challenges, technically none of this repeater “Group” are familiar with how repeaters really work. Hans has owned this system for some time and previously worked with the WINsystem maintenance team, we have learned a lot in a short period, are still learning, have had the support of SCRRBA (frequency Coordinators) Mike Morris WA6ILQ of Repeater-Builder.com, and of course Hans Ehlert. We recently had a very Generous donation of a “Service Monitor” (an extremely useful, nearly required tool for repeater tuning) by GOTAham Ken Campbell N6PED.

Burton Brink N6USO hosts rack space in his vault giving us a high-level home that contributes to our incredible range/coverage over much of Southern California, Los Angeles, Catalina and beyond.

Our small group is very devoted to pursuing near 100% uptime and high-quality audio along with broad options for remote access to this machine. We will try to keep our members and the local Ham community informed of our plans and whatever upgrades and back-up systems have been implemented.

.73′ Ken KC6WOK